News

Student blogger Mariya, who will soon start her second year in the MALD program, has filed an early report on her summer, starting with the first phase of her multi-country experience in Asia.
After a short visit home, my summer started with a stint on the other side of the world. In late March, I was accepted to the Mosaic Taiwan Fellowship, an all-expense paid two-week cultural exchange program sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China that “provides young U....

HKS students have access to a wide variety of resources and opportunities outside of the standard academic schedule. Fourteen centers and over 40 programs affiliated with HKS conduct research, produce publications, cover international, national and local issues of public policy and management, offer fellowships, organize events and support the teaching curriculum.A critical part of all of these activities is bringing practitioners to HKS to interact with students. This post highlights the fellow...

Eric Persons has been appointed as vice president for institutional advancement at Cazenovia College in central New York. In his new role, Persons will be responsible for leading Cazenovia College’s Fundraising Office, overseeing the college’s fundraising efforts. He will also supervise the Office of Alumni and Parent Relations and participate in key college administrative events associated with external affairs. Previously, Persons worked at Syracuse University, where he began his career...

All HKS students, no matter the Master’s degree program, must complete courses related to economics and quantitative analysis. Strong undergraduate or graduate performance in classes that involve the use of quantitative methods is thus preferred. This can include, but is not limited to, math, economics, and statistics courses. Some applicants who do not take such classes as part of a degree program will enroll in such classes after graduating to improve their candidacy. Transcripts and test sc...

Meet Akira – First year International Development Studies student from Japan coming to D.C. for the first time!
Through this program, I would like to do research on employment and labor issues in developing countries. When I was an undergraduate student, I visited Mongolia, Mexico and Kenya for a work camp program. From this experience, I learned that many people in developing countries have unstable jobs. My goal is to become a specialist in employment and job creation, and to work for a...

As we get closer to the start of the Fall 2017 semester, you’ll want to know what’s around Elliott (19th & E) so you can keep yourself entertained while you’re on or around campus!
When you need a break:
Graduate Student Forum (GSF): ESIA’s GSF is run by and for the Elliott grad students. They hold events ranging from museum visits, hikes, and of course, Thursday Night Out’s (TNO’s) during the school year! Expect to hear from them on upcoming events afte...

Princeton Profiles: Yusuf Dahl MPA '17, from Prison to PrincetonAug 15, 2017At age 18, Yusuf Dahl MPA '17 wasn’t heading off to college. He was on his way to prison.
Even on the day of his sentencing, though, Dahl was thinking ahead to how he could use his time in prison to prepare for a successful life on the outside. Eventually, he built a career and became involved in addressing the foreclosure crisis in his Milwaukee neighborhood.
Dahl’s experiences spurred him to come to Prin...

Students taking pre-session courses are here and other new students will arrive for Orientation on August 28. But returning students don’t need to be back on campus until Tuesday, September 5. They’ll be coming back to Fletcher from a mapful of different locations. Here’s the map!
Some of those pins severely understate the number of students in a location. For example, in New York, students are pursuing internships at:
Asia Society Policy Institute
Bank of America
CDP ...

Fall 2017 Open House EventsThe opening of our 2018 online Master’s programs application is just a few short weeks away and we continue our long-term application planning series by announcing our fall 2018 open house dates. Visiting campus is one of the best ways to learn about HKS and engage with our community. If you are able to travel to Cambridge, we encourage you to attend one of our events this fall. For those who are able to visit but unable to attend an open house, we also host infor...

Shana Udvardy’s article, “5 Reasons Why Congress Should Immediately Greenlight the Nation’s Natural Disaster Responder-in-Chief,” was published in June of 2017. In the article, Udvardy draws from her expertise as a climate preparedness specialist with the Climate & Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. She posits that Congress should waste no time confirming the newly appointed Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) administrator, Brock Long. It ...

A real milestone on the road to the fall semester is today’s start of the August pre-session. During the pre-session, incoming MIB students take Strategic Management. At the same time as it’s a required (core) course, being in the class is also a good opportunity for the MIB cohort to come together. Other students (both incoming and second-years) can (and do) join in.
The other pre-session class is Design and Monitoring of Peacebuilding and Development Programming. It’s...

This post serves as a reminder that the Admissions Office consistently schedules opportunities for prospective applicants to interact with members of the HKS community. Below is our current list of in person and virtual opportunities to learn more about HKS directly from staff, students, and alumni. To see event details and to register, click on the date links. Three new events we recently added are in bold and events that are in the planning stages are in italics.
In Person Sessions
Niamey,...

Graduate school is tough enough without having to worry about everyday life stressors, such as personal budgets, homesickness, and the like. SIPA graduate Adriana Popa, MIA 2016, shares her advice for quelling your own anxieties as a new graduate student (from 2016)....

Yoshina Hurgobin is now an assistant professor of South Asian history in the Department of History and Philosophy at Kennesaw State University, in Kennesaw, Georgia. Before her position at Kennesaw State, Hurgobin was a postdoctoral fellow at the Indian Ocean World Centre, at McGill University. Her research looks at questions of labor migration, citizenship, rights and nationalism in the diaspora of South Asia. Her work has appeared in the journal International Labor Working-Class History and i...

Meet Jeff – First year Security Policy Studies student concentrating in Security & Development and Conflict Resolution!
I completed my undergraduate degree at Brigham Young University majoring in political science and minoring in Middle Eastern Studies. I studied Arabic for over two years, which included a semester in Amman, Jordan. I also speak Thai; after my first year of school, I deferred for two years and worked in Thailand as a volunteer during that time. I currently work as a c...

Prospective applicants interested in the graduate programs offered at Johns Hopkins SAIS can now open an account to begin an application for the 2018-19 academic year. You can start your application now by clicking on this link, you can save it and return to it as many times as you like. As you complete the application form, be sure to have the instructions at hand, which you can find on this page.Applicants to SAIS Europe will be able to apply to one of the five programs offered at our cam...

HKS students have access to a wide variety of resources and opportunities outside of the standard academic schedule. Fourteen centers and over 40 programs affiliated with HKS conduct research, produce publications, cover international, national and local issues of public policy and management, offer fellowships, organize events and support the teaching curriculum.A critical part of all of these activities is bringing practitioners to HKS to interact with students. This post highlights the fellow...

In today's installment of our New Students Series, we're welcoming Poorvi Goel from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India. Poorvi studied economics at St. Stephen's College in Delhi. She also earned a degree from the London School of Economics and she's been working as an economist at the Planning Commission of India and the UNDP. She's nervous about readjusting to life as a student, but looks forward to getting her "hands dirty" in the development process instead of just being an onlooker. Welcome Poor...

U.S. Coast Guard Commander Christian Lee began his most recent assignment: as a Coast Guard Fellow on the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Homeland Security. Commander Lee’s selection as a U.S. Coast Guard Fellow comes after his recent graduation from the National War College in Washington, D.C., where he earned his M.S. degree in National Security Strategy. This is not Lee’s first assignment with the U.S. Coast Guard. In a previous position, Lee served as co...

Politics & Polls #55: Has the Conservative Revolution Succeeded? A Conversation with Nancy MacLeanAug 10, 2017Joining today’s episode is Nancy MacLean, an award-winning scholar of the twentieth-century United States, whose new book, “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America,” has been described by Publishers Weekly as “a thoroughly researched and gripping narrative… [and] a feat of American intellectual and political history.” B...

On Saturday, all my nearest and dearest will gather together for the wedding of my son, Josh, to his long-time sweetheart, Ati. I don’t bring my home life into the blog as much as I once did, but the year when Josh applied to college for his undergraduate studies gave me a chance to think about the admissions process from the applicant’s perspective. I revisited the topic four years later when my daughter, Kayla, was doing her own college search.
Now they, their friends, and my a...

It is impossible to ignore the role technology plays in relation to governance and policy issues and DigitalHKS is a cross-HKS initiative aimed at training tech-aware, innovative leaders and generating ideas that harness information and communication technologies to help solve our most challenging problems. David Eaves is a lecturer at HKS with a strong background in the use of technology to improve government services and this post is the fourth in a series authored by David on the role and i...

For several years, Nanjing University and the Hopkins-Nanjing Center have jointly published a series of books in Chinese and English that feature subjects and authors related to US-China relations and/or the Hopkins-Nanjing Center. The most recent book, The Hopkins-Nanjing Center Book of Memories, celebrates all things HNC as a 30th anniversary tribute. Edited by the co-directors of the Hopkins-Nanjing Center in 2016, it features interviews and fond remembrances from former faculty, students, an...

Yesterday we started our 2018 application cycle series focused on fellowships and scholarships and we were recently notified of a specific opportunity that I wanted to highlight in this post. While this opportunity is very specific, we are constantly on the lookout for new funds available to students and we will post them on this blog and we encourage applicants to familiarize themselves with our fellowship and scholarship database. It seems like not a year passes when I do not have a painful ...

Meet Sunny (formally ‘Ziqing’) – First year Asian Studies student from Foshan, China!
About eight years ago, I came to the US to complete my high school education in Maryland. At first, I choose to study Communication as my major. However, I realized that my passion was not about being a journalist. Instead, I wanted to learn more about international relations. Therefore, I transferred to American University.
After graduating from AU, I started my internship at The Japan-Ameri...

Junior Summer Institute Serves as “Boot Camp” for Future Leaders in Public PolicyAug 8, 2017
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Thirty-four rising college seniors from 13 states and three countries participated in the annual PPIA Junior Summer Institute at the Woodrow Wilson School, a seven-week intensive program on public policy. Their studies culminated in oral presentations of their policy research to panels of distinguished practitioners. Full story here.
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The Elliott School Plan of Study must be completed by all students within the first few months of your time at Elliott.
Around September/October, you’ll be contacted by your Program Director and Academic Advisor to arrange for a 1-1 meeting to discuss your Plan of Study, which outlines all of the classes you expect to take to reach your credit threshold for a degree. Depending on whether you are a full-time or part-time student, you’re able to make changes to this plan, even after i...

Having a recent graduate in the office during the summer makes me a very lucky blogger. I mentioned to Rafael that it would be great to highlight published student writing and he was ON IT! He sent a note to the Social List and the responses poured in. I’ll let him tell you about it.
A few weeks ago, I sent an email to Fletcher’s current students and recent graduates. My goal was to showcase some student publications from the past year to give you, the revered readers of this blo...

We have been running a long-term application planning series on the blog and this post is the first in another series related to the 2018 application process which will focus on financial aid. The process of applying for admission and applying for financial aid are separate at HKS. Our admission application deadline is December 4, 2017 and the financial aid application deadline is January 24, 2018. Thanks go out to our Student Financial Services Staff for their contribution to the blog. * * * *...